Meaning
by EternalConfusion
Summary: Oneshot. Takes place during 'Follow The Leader' Jack and Kate have a much needed discussion about why Jack wanted to detonate the bomb, and what that means for them/Kate.


_A/N: Another one shot inspired by 'Follow the Leader'. Seriously, so much potential in the last few episodes. Obviously the writers did well at using the Jate potential...or not._

_Disclaimer: Not mine, but hey, a girl can dream!_

* * *

"Are you okay?" Kate asks, after she's managed to sit up inside Eloise's tents, handcuffed and all.

Jack spits out some blood before answering, "Yeah."

Kate lets out a brief sigh, and then remembering their earlier conversation decides it's time they had a talk. "You know, before we were caught, you said that we needed to put things back the way they were supposed to be. What did you mean by that?"

"If we can do what Faraday said...our plane never crashes," he lets out a breath, smiling slightly, "Flight 815 lands in Los Angeles." Kate's eyes and face grow serious, worried, scared slightly, realising what this means. "And everyone we lost since we got here," Jack smiles, chuckles almost, not noticing her expression before continuing "they'd all be alive."

"And what about us?" Her response was quick, mind racing. While she pauses for a moment, she sees his face change slightly, but she doesn't fully understand him. "We just...go on living our life because we've never met?"

"All the misery that we've been through," he shakes his head slightly, turning to look at her. "We'd just wipe it clean. Never happened."

Kate sits forward, her features twisted, caught somewhere between sadness and anger, she can't believe him. "It was **not** all misery." She defends their relationship, because, God, someone has to. And it's the truth, they were happy, blissfully. And they were so in love, it was...it was everything she'd dreamed, and more. But like always, it didn't last.

Jack's expression changes, for a moment he seems reminiscent, "Oh." He breathed, with a slight smile, perhaps he remembered some of the good times too, she wondered. But then he looks away, and his face turns serious once more. "Enough of it was."

"It was not that miserable Jack, and you know it. Not enough to...to...want to do this." She tells him shaking her head, her eyes watery, and tugging her lip between her teeth briefly. He didn't respond, instead stared straight past her, refusing to answer. "Did our relationship mean that little to you, Jack?" She questions him, her eyes piercing. "Do I mean that little to you?" She asks him as a tear slips down her cheek, and she wishes, desperately, that she wasn't cuffed, so that she could wipe it away.

"Kate." Jack sighs and shakes his head. "It's not just about our relationship..."

"We were happy." She tells him, her voice wavering. "**I** was happy, Jack, I was so fucking happy..."

"I hurt you, Kate."

"I'm glad you realise it." Kate huffs and draws her knees up, so that she can rest her head on them.

"I was messed up." He says, and watches her, all curled up...before, before he would have had her in his arms in an instant, but not now. Not when he was the cause of all this.

"I tried to help..." She raises her head, and closes her eyes for a long moment, but then opens them continuing. "I was trying to be a good mother, and good fiancée, not that it seemed to mean much to you. I tried, but you...you didn't want help...you wanted the island, and alcohol, and drugs...and...and suicide..." She whispered the words, hating to believe it. "You nearly jumped off a bridge, and refused help...Jack..." She shakes her head, and prays that one day, he'll learn just how much he'd hurt her. "It hurt, it really hurt, living without you hurt, giving Aaron up hurt...it still hurts." She tells him and looks to the floor. "But that doesn't mean you can just go and erase all the good stuff...I don't want to lose those memories too."

"I hate that I hurt you. I want to take away your pain." He tells her.

"Nice way of showing it, hun." She says in a bitter, sarcastic tone.

"Don't you see?" He asks, and after her blank stare continues. "I'm doing this for you. I loved you..." She raises her eyebrows at that, "still love...but...I've cause you too much heartache. I want you to be happy...I want for you to not hurt...I want..."

"You think detonating a hydrogen bomb is going to make me happy?" She asks, incredulous and anger twists in her words. "You think...you think...I don't even know what you think. You know what this means, if you do this?" She asks him, not believing that he'll go on and do this if he knows the consequences...that just...that just wouldn't be Jack. "You know...if the plane landed in L.A., I'd still be with that Marshall, I'd go to jail, Jack, for a very long time...we'd never meet, I'd never...I'd never have loved you, have experienced being a mother with Aaron...I would never have experienced happiness. And you...what about you? Would you be happy? You'd go to your Dad's funeral; you'd throw yourself back into work, alone."

She pauses to let him think for a while, to let him understand how she feels, what she thinks. "I..." he starts to say, but she cuts him off, before he gets a chance to say anything more.

"So, you might think that you're doing this for me, that by doing this, you'll make everything okay, but you're not. Because, I know you Jack, and you know me...and somewhere, the real you, my Jack, he wouldn't do this. He would know..." She sighed deeply. "He would know that I would rather have experienced happiness, those few months of perfection...he would know that I would rather have loved deeply, and lost horribly...he knows I would prefer the heartache, over the alternative." Kate says, once again, crying. "You're not the Jack I fell in love with." She tells him, no longer caring about how many tears she cries, "Sometimes, I see flashes..." she sighs, "flashes of my Jack, still in there, and I just wonder, how long will it take? How long till you come back to me Jack?"

"I am your Jack, though," he says, but she knows he's not certain.

"What if..." she sighs, "What if this was our destiny, to meet, to fall in love..."

"Then we'd meet again." He tells her, he doesn't know what he thinks, or believes anymore, but if there is such a thing as destiny, he knows that's true, because he couldn't live without her.

"But if it was our destiny to do it in this way...you can't change that. Can't you just...Please, don't do this." She begs of him. "We can figure it out, we'll work it out, and we'll pull through, we have to. Wouldn't you rather that, than things being the way they were before? And if...if there's no such thing as destiny, and we never meet...don't you want to just try?"

"I have to." Jack says, he knows why he wanted to do it at first, but Kate, damn it, she's got this way of manipulating him, and now he doesn't really know what to think. "I love you but..." He tells her, and then they hear someone outside the tent, about to come in.

"Don't, Jack, please." She manages to choke out before Eloise comes into the tent.

* * *

_A/N: Sometimes when I write Jate the characters just sorta...take over. And well, that's what happened here. It's not quiet how I planned, but I kinda like it, I think. This talk was definitely needed – I wonder if they'll have a bit of a chat early S6 – however they plan on even doing S6 I don't know!_

_I'm currently working on a post-incident Jate fic. Just a one shot – wanted it to be longer, but I don't have the time/patience/inspiration to do a longer fic. Hopefully I'll finish that soon – so keep an eye out for it. I like finales...(well actually I don't, because it deprives me of my Lost fix) and exams (again not so much) they make me all inspired and want to write! Hehe._

_Review, review – because procrastinating by reading reviews is far more purposeful than playing solitaire...and losing!_


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